Casa Oliveira and a dead aga-deh

Went down to Casa Oliveira today and, as I knew he would, Jorge remembered me. Jorge is Casa Oliveira's long-time salesman. I had last been there one year ago, to buy a tantan; and had been there 6 months before that once, to buy a surdo. So I walked in today, started fooling around with the timbals, and within two minutes Jorge was squinting at me in concentration, saying "Weren't you.... You've been here before. Right? And you bought... You bought a surdo!"

He's one of those guys who just never forgets a face. (and it's not that I'm all that memorable - lots of gringos go to Casa Oliveira). Great guy, too. He'll tell you accurately which instruments are better than others. He'll spend two hours showing you 50 different cavaquinhos so you can try each one. Casa Oliveira's prices are always a little high, but they don't try to rip you off; their stuff is good.

I'd gone there to go cavaquinho shopping with Avron, but I was early, so..... I accidentally drifted over to the timbals and tuned a couple up and played them and the Gope was nice but the Contemporanea was nice too and the Gope was better but then it turned out the Gope had such a fragile shell I could bend it like rubber! Tucked it between my legs like usual and I almost collapsed the shell! yikes! So, I got the Contemporanea, good drum, much stronger than the Gope, and a case, and then right near all the cases was this box of surdo heads, so I went through all of those, and found the most beautiful 20" skin head but that is the ONE size of surdo I do NOT own; I own a 16", 18", 22", and 24" but I couldn't find that beautiful skin head in any other size than 20", so, never mind on that, and then I remembered Randy asked me for a choro wooden shaker and me & Jorge had a long discussion about that, and in the end, they don't carry them, but, he got around to showing me these incredibly cute little other shakers, so I got four, and I looked for quad bells for Pat but no dice on that, and then I was tuning down the timbal and suddenly thought "Hey! I wonder if they carry those long tuners for surdos," and they did! So I got five! And then I needed a plastic-head pandeiro, and, hmm, there was one with a flag and one without, and am I really going to pay 60 reais more just for a silly Brazilian flag on the front? Apparently I am. Pandeiro with silly Brazilian flag, check. Oh! I also need 8 caixa strings! Jorge got out the caixa strings.

It is VERY dangerous to go to Casa Oliveira in your last week in Brazil, when you have just landed an unexpected $1600 job and have spaced the fact that you are going to need that $1600 entirely for rent, and when a friend has just said "Oh, if you need a bit more money for your last week, I can loan you some."

Avron and Vincent showed up partway through this. Avron had come at my request to help me with cavaquinho selection, and Vincent just because he always likes to go to Casa Oliveira. Avron was immensely helpful with the cavaquinhos. I went in the end with a good basic beginner model - not the worst, not the best. Like Avron, my tendency when starting a new instrument - one I'm not sure yet if I'll commit to - is to get just a basic model that's about two price notches above the cheapest. One that is good enough that you won't have to fight it while you're learning, and a decent sound. I was terribly tempted by a blond cavaquinho that was the next rank up - such a nice color! - I'm such a sucker for pretty instruments! - but the blond one had a much tinnier sound.

I think that's it for me; last round of big purchases.
so I am carrying back with me:
1 big black bag with two alfaia shells nested in each other, and 2 hammocks and a lovely blanket
1 big black bag with a zabumba and the big wooden rings of the smaller alfaia (the rings won't nest!) and 3 hammocks
1 big black bag with a timbal and all my shoes and clothes inside it.
1 big black hardshell suitcase with 2 pandeiros and the cavaquinho and all my little shakers and my tamborim-mute
1 big box with a repinique
1 backpack with my laptop

Five things to check.
wow, am I glad I don't have that airport change any more....

It's strange for me here now. I'm working full time on a last-minute writing project that just fell in my lap, and it is weird to be working full-time here. I haven't gone out much at all... haven't even been staying up late. I miss the escolas and blocos terribly! There's still pagode and choro around but without those driving baterias, it's a little hard to get excited. I feel in an odd limbo of being half in Rio, half in the US, and not sure what will happen next musically. I haven't played much of anything in ten days, which seems like a terribly long time...

.... and, nastiest of all, my hard drive ("aga-deh" in portuguese; that's how they say "HD") completely died. I have been archiving all my recordings on an external hard drive. Today I sat down to arrange the files and starting backing up, since of course I haven't time to back anything up in ages.... and whoa.... the entire hard drive was suddenly empty... nearly 100gb of videos and recordings completely gone. Luckily I'd put my very favorite stuff back on my laptop too, so I still have my Monobloco and Banga recordings & some other key stuff. But I lost all my escola recordings, except the few I'd posted to my website; every recording from Carnival; most photos... a huge amount of mp3s.....

I might be able to recover it all. I'll take the aga-deh to somebody tomorrow. But the nice thing was.... it doesn't really bother me at all to have lost all that. I realized I don't need it. I posted most of my favorite stuff already; I've still got the things I most want; and the way those escolas sounded, I feel like I have it my blood now. I have all the escolas right here with me; I will never lose it. Yeah, I lost some cool repique calls and some cool breaks, in those escola recordings somewhere... but well, I have another lesson with Jonas tomorrow, another lesson with Scott Feiner Monday; there are always so many new cool things coming up in the future; and so many great people to keep learning from.